SACRAMENTO, CA - FEBRUARY 19: A view of the California State Capitol February 19, 2009 in Sacramento, California. After days of wrangling, the California State Senate secured the necessary two-thirds majority to pass a $41 billion budget after Sen. Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria) broke party lines and voted for the budget. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom has been taking criticism lately for discussing his "workload." According to his calendar, Newsom has been averaging about one day per week in his Sacramento office. The rest of the time, he travels the state to learn about California's issues. He also has been on a recent trade mission to China for about as many days, which counts as state business and should. But that's about it. Translation: The lieutenant governor position is a lot of puffery and not much else.

Other than the rare opportunity to cast a tie-breaking vote when the state Senate is knotted at 20-20, a spot on the State Lands Commission, and ex-officio memberships on the State University Board of Trustees and University of California Board of Regents, there's not much else to do. Oh, yes, the lieutenant governor becomes governor if the state's chief executive vacates his post, which last occurred in 1953 when then-Gov. Earl Warren was appointed chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. As one former occupant office once said, "the most important job of the lieutenant governor in California is to check each day if the governor wakes up."

But Newsom has done us all a service, for his candor invites an assessment of other positions in California's executive branch. An examination of the various offices shows several areas of unnecessary duplication and waste at a time when California desperately needs every dollar available put to use in underfunded programs and services.

Consider some other examples of elected state offices that aren't needed:

The money offices: Californians separately elect a state controller, treasurer and four members of the state Board of Equalization. All of these deal with taxing and spending in one way or another. The controller's principal job is to keep track of the funds coming in and dispense those going out. The treasurer invests state funds after they have come in and before they go out. The Board of Equalization oversees general state and local government tax policies. All of these could easily be merged into one office.

Campaign records: The secretary of state keeps track of candidates and election results, while the Fair Political Practices Commission keeps records on campaign fundraising and spending. There is no reason the financial aspects of campaigns can't be merged with the record-keeping associated with candidacies. Running for office and campaign finance go hand-in-hand and should be monitored as such.

The examples above are the most egregious cases of waste, but others that could be considered, too:

Why do we elect a superintendent of public education when the governor is entitled to appoint a secretary of education?

Why do we elect an insurance commissioner when the governor has under his control the State and Consumer Services Agency, which includes an office of the insurance adviser?

Of course, the occupants of these and other duplicative agencies will immediately scream something to the effect of: "But you don't understand. We're unique from X because we do this and they do that." Yet strip away the desire for self-preservation, and they would be hard-pressed to defend their overlapping turfs.

The simple fact is that California has blended the concepts of checks and balances and political reform into a hapless collection of offices and programs that duplicate our problems rather than solve them. As a result, accountability loses out to abstraction. No wonder people become so confused - no longer know who is in control of what.

Decades ago, the comedy team of Abbott and Costello performed a sketch entitled "Who's on First?" By carefully connecting similar players' names with competing positions on the baseball field, they generated confusion with each other and endless laughter from their audience. But government is neither comedy nor a game. It should be a tight network of offices organized in an efficient manner to meet the people's needs, pure and simple. It's time that we revisit all the state's elected offices to see which should remain, which should be consolidated and which should go.